Category Archives: Mother Guilt

Tearing my hair out!

This week has been a long one. Or at least it’s felt that way. I’m not sure whether it’s school holidays and work on the house that have all combined to turn my delightful Muddy Puzzler into a Muddy Wrecking Ball. Maybe it’s that she’s now competing for attention with the Organiser and the Pixie who are home from School and Preschool. Maybe it’s that she knows she’s only got a few months left of the terrible two’s and she’s going to make the most of it. Maybe it’s the work I’ve been doing on the house that I’ve been neglecting her and she’s a bit bored. Maybe she’s tired of the games we’re playing and we need to mix it up a bit. Whatever it is, it has me tearing my hair out, quite literally, as I pull paint out of it that’s been splashed in it by my Muddy Puzzler.

This week alone she has wreaked havoc in my household and shredded my patience with the following activities:

  • Tipping over a 10L tin of paint that Muddy Hubby had failed to seal fully, resulting in a big pile of paint to clean up and get splashed around (hence the paint in the hair)
  • Emptying Muddy Hubby’s aftershave all over herself so she still smells like Chanel Allure for Men 3 days later
  • Painting toothpaste all over the new bathroom walls and door, I’m told she was trying to polish it
  • Painting toothpaste all over the bedroom carpet (not sure how she got hold of the toothpaste)
  • Losing the key to the local tip, so we can’t take the rubbish and recycling to the tip until we find it
  • Running the water tap in the bedroom for a good while while I fed Muddy Bubby, depleting our rain water tanks which are getting a bit low
  • Climbing the painting ladder and falling off the top (I only turned around for a second!)
  • Sneaking the sticker book into the car and decorating the interior with stickers
  • Spraying Muddy Hubby’s deodorant all over our bedroom, including the photo frames
  • Spreading the Muddy Organiser’s Lip Smacker all over her face (resulting in tears for the Muddy Organiser)
  • Pulling all the photo frames down in her bedroom and pulling out all the photos
  • Stamping the office ‘Paid’ stamp all over herself and the office (not sure how she got it down from the top shelf)

Today topped it all off for me, she decided that her Baby Brother needed a little bit of attention, after she had finished colouring in her toenails in blue texta and decorating her lips with red texta she decided to draw on Muddy Bubby with blue texta. I don’t think he minded, but it probably isn’t the best of looks when we go out for a play date tomorrow.


Proud to show off his decorated face to Muddy Hubby when we ducked up the paddock

We have headed outside whenever we can to let the Muddy Kids run off some energy and have some fun in the sun. My plan at the moment is to keep her within a couple of metres and eyesight at all times (not really sustainable though) and to spend the remaining few days of holidays outside, where there is only a minimal amount of mischief that she can get into, surely?!?!?

Come on, please tell me she’s not the only one getting into mischief?
Do you have any tricks for keeping kids busy and out of mischief, please share if you do!

Painting, Sanding, Painting and More Painting

Now I do love my old little farmhouse, but before you get all ‘aww a nice old farmhouse’ it’s not like one of those at all. It’s not one of those lovely big sprawling farmhouses, nor is it an old sandstone one. It’s a little weatherboard that has been added on and added on, with verandahs closed in and a toilet put inside. We have gradually over the last 7 years done little jobs to help make it a bit more homely and comfy for us and the four Muddy Kids. The biggest of these jobs has been closing in the bathroom, by taking out the window from when it used to be the outside of the house. The verandah is now my office and the kids rooms are off the office. Really it’s a bit of a rabbit warren. But a rabbit warren I do love. EXCEPT for the weatherboards.

While the louvres used to be the bane of my existence and I hated cleaning them and all the dust they’d let in, we have replaced them with proper windows, much to my delight. It is now the weatherboards that are the bane of my existence. With 3 verandahs being closed in to now be part of the house I have LOTS of weatherboards to paint. One verandah I was lucky to get out of painting while I was pregnant with Muddy Organiser. The other two I have not been so lucky. At the moment I am covered in paint splatter, I have paint in my hair and over my work clothes. For you cannot roller weatherboards, they have to be painted by hand. This means a lot of time, to make sure you’ve covered every part of the weatherboard. They are loooooong walls and my poor Muddy Kids have been a little neglected as I plow through the painting in an effort to get it done before the new carpet goes down.

Muddy Hubby has been able to step in for short periods of time to take some of the kids out and about on the farm while I paint, but for the remainder they have been TV kids, and are getting used to me saying ‘Just let me finish this section’ before we can eat or get games down. Again, like the bathroom I know it will be worth it, it’s been good to keep my arms going while bootcamp is on holidays too!

I do wonder though, who invented weatherboards and why? They gather dust and dirt easily, they are a pain to paint and if they’re on the outside of the house require even more painting than my inside ones do. Was it just for looks, did they think ‘that’s a nice look, we’re not going to have to worry about the upkeep’ or do they actually serve a purpose?

Where our bathroom window used to be



Where new meets old, looks like the house used to be painted blue



Popping in to see how long til we can have morning tea!

Do you have weatherboards to paint too?
Have you got a rabbit warren of a house or is yours more streamlined?

Play-Doh – Get over it Nat!

I am going to fess up straight away and say that I loathe play-doh. Can’t stand the stuff. I used to not mind it, I really enjoyed playing with it, with kids in our therapy sessions and found rolling out the play-doh somehow therapeutic while we targeted sounds, language, whatever the client was working on.
Now, as a parent, I can’t stand the stuff. I don’t make it from scratch, I don’t add glitter or smell or any of that exciting stuff. We do however have LOTS of play-doh and play-doh related equipment, that we have been given over the years, but I am a terrible parent. Every time the Muddy girls ask for it I find some excuse to not get it out ‘Puzzler’s awake and she’ll eat it’, ‘why don’t we do some cooking’, ‘Dad will be home soon, so we won’t have time’. Today I ran out of excuses! It is raining, that slow rain that has no breaks for going outside, just slow and steady, so before I knew it the Muddy Preschooler and the Muddy Pixie had dragged down the big box and were into it, having a lovely time.

For me it just reinforced my dislike. I have a suspicion it’s my control freak gene that influences my feelings. The mixing of colours together that you can’t separate out, the tiny bits that get stuck and then go all hard and dry, the little bits that get ground into the ground when they fall off the table, all contribute to our decision not to get it out.

As I was cleaning it all up today and making comments about how I don’t like it my Muddy Preschooler replies with ‘Well why do we have it in the house then Mum?‘. Sometimes I am amazed at what comes out of their mouths. I replied with ‘We have it in the house because you love it’.

I know how much they love it, how creative they can be with it, how it stretches their imagination. Today they had planned out a whole 3 course meal, sorting dessert from entree from main and making each individual piece. This is why we have it in our house. This is why I need to get over my hang ups on clean up and mess when it comes to Play-doh and let them enjoy, after all isn’t that what parenting is, in part, all about, letting go of some of our boundaries to let them explore theirs?

Muddy Puzzler sneaking a piece to eat when she thinks I’m not looking!
Is their Play-Doh in your house?
Do your kids like messy play that you don’t?